Kisho Kakutani "Fog#7" 2025, Acrylic on canvas, 91.0 × 91.0 cm
Whitestone Gallery Seoul is proud to host A Swimming Soul, a group exhibition featuring a compelling dialogue between three emerging Korean and Japanese artists: Lee Juyoung, Kisho Kakutani, and Yudai Takeuchi.
Running from April 18 to May 24, 2026, the exhibition uses the metaphor of a swimming fish to explore the drifting nature of youth—a state characterized by movement without a fixed destination and the pursuit of meaning within a shifting current.
Lee Juyoung’s work begins with a poignant observation of urban soundproof walls—structures designed for human comfort that inadvertently become fatal obstacles for birds.
In this exhibition, Lee expands his focus to glass surfaces and reflected landscapes, presenting images that appear veiled by fog or clouds.
Rather than providing clear definitions of form, his paintings focus on the persistence of indistinct afterimages.
Through this approach, Lee visualizes the concept of Ringwanderung—the phenomenon of walking in circles while believing one is moving forward—thereby questioning the validity of our perception in an uncertain world.
Kisho Kakutani utilizes layers of visual "noise" to partially obscure his scenes, creating elements that function as both windows and curtains.
Juyoung Lee "Everywhere a clear cloud" 2025, oil on canvas, 193.9 x 130.3 cm
Rather than serving as a distraction, this noise acts as a generative filter that invites the viewer’s imagination to complete the image.
In his latest Scrawl series, Kakutani deliberately erases parts of the landscape to make his own artistic presence more visible, ensuring the image remains in a state of flux.
By unsettling the viewer's perception, he highlights the conceptual depth found in the thin space between the visible and the invisible.
Yudai Takeuchi reimagines the color black as an autonomous dimension of space and time. His work serves as a portal that transforms mundane imagery into something otherworldly.
For this exhibition, Takeuchi focuses on the liminal state of sleep—specifically the transition between consciousness and the unconscious.
He visualizes the sensation of inversion, where the world feels as though it is flipping or turning, creating a dual condition where the subject is simultaneously disconnected from reality yet deeply connected to a state of unreality.
In A Swimming Soul, swimming is presented not as a means of reaching a goal, but as a continuous act of existing within a flow.
By moving through their own constructed worlds, Lee, Kakutani, and Takeuchi reveal unique ways of navigating the ambiguity and instability of modern reality.
The exhibition invites viewers to contemplate a perception that, like a fish in water, remains in constant, graceful motion despite the absence of a clear path.
Yudai Takeuchi "Shedding" 2026, Gesso, pencil, watercolor, and varnish on wood panel, 60.6 × 72.7 cm
